DNA Money Edit: India's PE market set for a big leap

Unicorns, privately held start-up companies valued at over $1 billion, have resolutely swayed India's private equity (PE) deal market in 2018. Nearly half of 2018's exit value resulted from one deal – the $16 billion sale of Flipkart to Walmart, but top 15 deals in 2018 made up about 40% of total investment value, pretty similar to 2017, when the top 15 deals made up half of the total value. Significant large deals among Unicorns were Swiggy, OYO Rooms, Paytm and Byju's, while large PE deals were also reported in HDFC Bank, Star Health and Allied Insurance.

2018 has been an extremely busy year for PE players, better than the previous record set in 2017 in terms of value of deals and exits. There were 793 deals with a total of $26.3 billion in investments, according to Bain & Company's India Private Equity Report. In another report, EY, however, puts the figure (this includes venture capital investments as well) at $35.8 billion.

Among others, consumer technology, IT and IT-enabled Services (ITeS), and BFSI seem to have driven most of the exit values during 2018. The Bain report said these are also the sectors in which investments have grown during the past four to five years.

The Unicorns continue to hold the sway in 2019 as well. No doubt, India is well positioned to attract a much higher share of the private capital from abroad.